


Clean

by Viridian5



Category: Saiyuki
Genre: Canon - Manga, Humor, Living Together, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-01-24
Updated: 2008-01-24
Packaged: 2017-10-02 07:15:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viridian5/pseuds/Viridian5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just say it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Clean

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for for "Be There" in volume 5 of _Saiyuki_ and "Burial" in volume 4 of _Saiyuki Reload_. Pre-reading by Bardsley and Lunarennui.

This should be easier, but when had life been easy? Things being like this just followed the shape of the rest of his life. Reality's a bitch.

Sha Gojyo, the dashing, handsome ladies man with a tragic past, happens upon strange guy lying in the road with his guts hanging out. Most people would keep on going, but Sha Gojyo takes this stranger home, takes care of him, and falls in love with him. Guy remains stranger because Gojyo is too stupidly hung up on him to risk asking, though they trade enough personal stories to feel intimate. A month of companionable good times passes quickly, and guy says he's leaving, with it being damned obvious to Sha Gojyo that guy would never come back and would probably die. Improbably, a grumpy high priest and a greedy monkey intervene but only to take guy away to supposedly die somewhere else. Sha Gojyo mourns, dramatically even. But guy returns with a new name and comes to live with him.

In a story, that would be the happily ever after ending, but guy renamed Hakkai and Sha Gojyo aren't getting on well after it. Hakkai only talks in light-voiced pleasantries, and Sha Gojyo can't find the right way to fill the silences or pull something realer from him. Drama strikes again, and Hakkai has to go youkai and use umbrella fu to save a much chagrined Sha Gojyo from a group of thugs about to kill him. As embarrassing (and hot) as that is, it still doesn't lead to a breakthrough, just a lessening of tensions. Cho Hakkai and Sha Gojyo continue to awkwardly dance around each other instead of declaring their mutual whatever and consummating it with hot sex.

If Cho Hakkai even shares that feeling of whatever, which Sha Gojyo does not know because mysterious are the ways of the Hakkai.

Sha Gojyo needed a kinder author.

Right now he sipped a beer at the table and watched Hakkai watch the kettle. Before Hakkai, Gojyo hadn't even had a kettle. Then again, Gojyo could burn water.

Although Hakkai had wished him a good morning when he woke at noon and been all smiles, Gojyo had the feeling something was off. Could he finally be getting some kind of storm sense about the guy, like the way some of the bones his mom had broken ages ago ached before it rained?

He didn't know. The nameless guy who'd shared his apartment for a month had actually been more forthcoming--that you had fucked your sister was an intimate detail--but Gonou probably figured he'd die on his quest and never see Gojyo again. That could make a guy chattier. When you knew you'd be seeing the person you talked to tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and the person could call you on what you said, it probably felt riskier.

Probably. In most instances Gojyo talked straight out and said what he thought, and if people didn't like it, too bad. Not caring what people thought of him made that easy. Really. Unfortunately, he cared very deeply what Hakkai thought of him.

He had to draw Hakkai out more, but carefully. "That thing's never gonna finish if you keep watching it. Isn't it supposed to whistle when it's done anyway?"

"Of course."

"Something bothering you?"

"Does it look like something's bothering me?"

Oi. There they went. "I don't know. But if something is, you can tell me. You could even tell me bluntly to make sure I get it, especially if it's something I'm doing wrong so I can know not to do it."

"Bluntly?"

"No frills. Open-like. I'm more used to it."

"Yes, I saw you with Banri." Hakkai's pleasant expression subtly darkened to something more sinister. Banri better stay a _continent_ away, because if Hakkai got hands or claws on him it wouldn't be pretty.

Gojyo couldn't forget how Hakkai had torn through those thugs. Yeah, Sanzo had said he was a mass murderer and he'd coldly taken his own eye out to make a point, but it had still seemed distant from the smiling, light-voiced, pleasant guy who occasionally had a nasty sense of humor. Not anymore. He'd never even seen Hakkai's youkai self before. He'd tell Hakkai he looked hot like that if he hadn't thought the reaction to it would be total horror.

"You know, you can tell me stuff. Or vent and yell if you're ticked off. It can be kinda... cleansing like to get it out."

"Vent? I rarely raise my voice. It doesn't seem right to unless it's very important."

"You could still strip the niceties off and tell me things sometimes."

"I suppose. You mean, right now?"

"If something's bothering you, sure."

"Actually, a few things."

"Then get to it." Gojyo had no idea what to expect here.

"I know our standards of cleanliness are different and I don't _have_ to clean but" Hakkai's voice abruptly dropped into a lower, deeper, darker register, "I'm really fucking sick of seeing you use your fucking beer cans as ashtrays when you know we have an ashtray because I've fucking told you over and over. And what the fuck is up with that dirty sock hanging in the middle of the fucking mirror? Is there some kind of fucking homing beacon in there only you can hear, you little shit? Me removing them one by one does not fucking mean the mirror wants a new dirty sock. And you fucking left the fucking refrigerator door open last night _again_." Hakkai returned to his normal voice. "Gojyo, are you all right?"

Gojyo blinked. "Uh. Yeah. Fine." Just horrified and disturbed and really aroused. And the part of him that had heated up and thought "_Daddy_" could shut the fuck up.

Hakkai smiled a bit. "Did I swear too often or not enough?"

"Now you're fuckin' with me."

"Somewhat, yes."

"Can we get something in between your usual thing and... _that_ from now on? Because that was scary as hell but at least now I have some idea of what I should be doing."

"We'll see."

"And 'fuck' should only be used, uhm, sparingly, for special emphasis. Otherwise it loses its power."

"As a word perhaps, but not as an act."

It took a moment, but.... "Is that something you want me to do?" Feeling more confident, Gojyo had said it as a seductive purr.

"Eventually." Hakkai had a purr of his own going as he moved to stand between Gojyo's parted legs. "I meant what I said before Banri interrupted everything, that I want us to know more about each other."

"Hakkai, I've had my hands in your guts. I don't know anyone else that way."

"Gojyo." Hakkai didn't need to say anything else, just his name in that tone of voice.

"But if you wanna... date, I'm fine with that. We could have dinner, you could drink me under the table like you do...."

"I'd hardly want to do the last thing. You're no good to me unconscious."

"Now _this_ is communicating."

 

### END

 

_"I'd feel better if you'd vent,_  
_put your frustrations into four letter words_  
_and let them out on mine, the most weathered ears in town._  
_Say what you will, say what you mean._  
_No, you could never offend, your dirty words come out clean."_  
 -- "Clean" by Incubus


End file.
